How long has it already been since Rina was kidnapped and tortured by the villagers for whatever reason?

Minutes? Hours? Or even days?

She had no clue.

However, there was one thing she was certain of.

'They are going to kill me.'

There was no way she was going to get out of this situation alive if she didn't do anything soon. But therein lay the problem. How could she possibly escape with her being tied to a stony bed, her magical powers being seemingly sealed away, and the villagers gathering around her? Not to mention the village chief, who was supposed to be inflicting pain on her.

Yes. Supposed to.

This, however, didn't mean that the chief stopped what he had been doing all the time. To an objective observer, the man torturing Rina was doing fine in distributing the most amount of pain without killing his subject, despite being an amateur.

No, the reason was that somewhere along the way, Rina had stopped feeling anything like physical pain from her body.

At first, perhaps reinforced because of her young body, the pain from the scars and burns was unbearable for her. She had had no leeway whatsoever to think, as she had been busy screaming at the top of her lungs for each wound inflicted. And when there were short downtimes due to the man switching his tools or reheating his sharpened iron bar, when Rina had been able to think for a least a little bit, she had hoped, no, prayed to God so that her life would finally end, along with all the pain.

Fortunately, the pain began to subside as time passed, even though the man didn't seem to stop in his actions. So, as the pain eased, Rina slowly regained her composure to register the world around her.

At first, she was still confused, thinking she had finally died, but after a bit of observation, that notion was deemed unlikely. Then she remembered something she had read in her last life, which stated that when a human body was under great stress, it could temporarily sever the connections that gave sensations like pain to the brain, allowing the body's host to escape to safety. However, in such cases, it seemed that the pain would return later when everything was over to a greater extent.

Although Rina was glad that such a situation had apparently kicked in for her, she was certainly not happy about what she might have to go through in the next few days or weeks.

'Well, that's a problem for the future Rina,' she jokingly thought to herself, not even remotely aware of how absurd it was to joke at a time like this, especially when fear and despair were dominant inside her mind just moments ago.

Nonetheless, she wanted to come out of this situation alive. After all, she still had people she loved to look after. So, she racked up her brain to come up with an escape plan.

Unfortunately, all she could think of was to wait and hope. What could she even possibly do with her limbs chained and her magic sealed away?

So, for now, she could only wait for her powers to return and hope that the man would enjoy torturing her longer and thus not kill her any time soon. With that in mind, she turned her head to her left to look at him, praying for that.

Unfortunately, the world was a cruel place, as after who should know how much time had passed, the chief seemed to have enough and raised his heated and sharpened iron bar over Rina's chest, where her heart was. It was apparent that he wanted to go for the kill.

So, in a panic, Rina reflexively gathered all of her strength in both arms and pulled them out of the wrist-chains. As she did so, she could clearly hear the bones in her hands crunching, which gave her a strange sensation because she didn't feel any pain.

But due to the bones in her hands broken, her hand was a little smaller, albeit a little deformed, which she found quite disgusting. Nevertheless, with her now smaller hands that could fit through the wrist-chains, she easily came free.

'Wow... even though it was out of panic, I should have done it much sooner...'

Though she briefly marvelled at her solution, even if it had come to her purely out of panic, she quickly pushed the thought out of her mind to concentrate on the situation at hand.

With her hands now free, she grabbed the fast-approaching iron bar just a few millimetres shy from piercing her chest, while ignoring the sizzle sound her hands gave off as the flesh burned. This caused the man to panic and reflexively let go of the hot metal bar.

Seeing this, Rina was about to ease up her grip on the sharp object still pointed at her heart. However, at that moment, the man seemed to have regained his demeanour and re-grabbed the bar to thrust in downwards again, this time with more force.

Luckily for Rina, thanks to her training with Arland and due to the high specs of her body, Rina reacted accordingly in time by swiftly pushing the object away from her heart. As a result, even though the iron bar still pierced her chest, it narrowly missed her heart. However, because another organ was seemingly damaged instead, probably her left lung, she involuntarily coughed up blood and choked on it.

When the chief saw all this, he released the iron bar and stumbled backwards. After all, he had no idea what was currently happening.

A girl, who was supposed to be at death's door, was still struggling with all her might, seemingly unconcerned by the pain she should be feeling at the moment. That was why he and the peanut gallery couldn't help but feel the fear slowly but surely creeping up on them.

Meanwhile, Rina didn't have a good time either. Even though she still couldn't feel pain, it was still uncomfortable for her not to be able to breathe freely with all the blood blocking her airways. So she turned her head to the left and coughed out the blood so that her body could at least get some fresh oxygen.

While doing so, she caught a glimpse of the villagers, including the chief who had been torturing her, all backed as far away from her as possible to the edge of the room. In addition to that, they looked at her with wide-opened eyes and had fear written all over their faces.

Although Rina was curious as to why they reacted the way they did, she knew that she still wasn't safe. Even if the villagers left her alone from this point onwards, it was obvious to her that her body was not in good shape. At this rate, she would still die.

So her plan for now was to hurry to Fran and Marianne and return to the capital as quickly as possible to get help. As for getting first aid in the village, considering that the village doctor was also in this chamber, Rina deemed it to be impossible.

Therefore, with her next steps planned, she sat up and tried to get off the stone bed. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite possible yet, due to the fact that her ankles were still chained.

'Maybe I can get free the same way as I did with my hands?'

Normally, one would think that it would be impossible to free oneself from an ankle shackle by simply pulling the foot out and breaking the foot bones in the process. After all, a human couldn't possibly muster up enough strength to pull it out.

But that was only the case because one would feel immense pain. Thus, the brain would unconsciously put a limiter on the strength to prevent that from happening. With the pain factor removed for Rina, this was no problem.

So, with all of her strength, she slipped her feet out from the chains, fracturing both of her anklebones one the way. Naturally, the sound of them being broken was quite loud, which caused one or two screams of fear to come out from the mouths of quite a few villagers.

Royally ignoring the noise around her, she then tried to stand. However, it took her a few tries before she could stand properly because of the broken bones in her feet. But still, she didn't mind it for the moment, she was thankful enough for not feeling any pain for this.

When she was finally able to stabilise herself on her feet, she looked around for the exit but stopped halfway as she noticed the metal bar still protruding from her chest. Without further ado, she just grabbed it with her left hand and pulled it out... only to regret it immediately afterwards. The reason for this was the blood that was now flowing freely from her newly opened wound.

This naturally made her panic a little bit. After all, she knew that she could still die from blood loss, and now, with a new hole in her body, the time was running out even faster. So, without wasting any more moments, she moved her free right hand to her chest and pressed on the wound to slow down the bleeding. Only then did she go, or rather wobble, towards the exit she had just found.

Fortunately, the villagers had no intention of stopping her. They even stepped out of her way, clearing a path to the exit.

Even though it took her quite a while due to the condition of her feet, Rina finally reached the exit. And as nobody even moved a muscle to stop her, she left the room shortly after.

Even after she was nowhere to be seen anymore by any of the villagers, no one dared to say anything. They just collectively let out a big sigh of relief. After all, although the dozens of villagers gathered in this chamber were of different genders, professions, and personalities, they had all shared a single thought about the girl, no, the being, that had just left.

'A monster.'